Oh sorry I see what you're saying now, he would spend four years in high school regardless. I still think managing a grade skip in high school is pretty cool though and would help set you apart from the competition, but admittedly I am incredibly biased ;)

I didn't homeschool at all, but I skipped a grade in high school. I did algebra in 7th grade, geometry in 8th, high school biology in 8th. Then once in high school I was bored and didn't really like it. So I took the SAT once, in 10th grade. I got a 690 critical reading, 740 math, 790 writing. I skipped my junior year of high school. I got into early admission a top 25 university. And got into an honors program at the university. I did a total of 8 AP classes during my time in high school. If I had stayed for a fourth year in high school I would have had 14 AP's. So I don't know if I'm helping a lot, but I guess in my experience the university seemed impressed that I was able to skip a year of high school - maybe it set me apart. I mean I don't know what went into the admissions process. But I got into the honors programs which was even more selective than the overall admissions. I'm sure if I'd taken the SAT again, my score would have improved. But it was decent enough to begin with, that I didn't really care that much. I'm not sure if my experience helps much or was what your are looking for though. ETA: yeah they'll prob. be paying attention to more advanced work than age

Haha I think my father would be horrified:tongue_smilie: He still keeps trying to explain to her the difference between the hard disk and the actual computer. For a while she was calling the entire computer the hard disk.:confused: She's so funny sometimes:lol:

Yeah my mom doesn't necessarily understand the whole "common sense" part about avoiding a virus.:lol: To me, it's just natural - don't be stupid! But, she needs specific detailed instructions.:tongue_smilie: She's now gone to the side of being overly cautious though...she's the one member of the family who is not a natural computer-y person:D

I know professors usually give that advice but I think it depends on the student a lot. I skipped the Calc I and II classes and didn't suffer for it, my older brother skipped a huge sequence of undergraduate math because he had already done a lot of it in 8th grade/high school. I just think each student should carefully consider how deep their understanding is. Because for some, retaking the class would be really boring whereas being able to start with some new material would be engaging and interesting.

At least for the the county that I came from, the algebra in 9th grade, pre-calc in 12th grade was the least rigorous/accelerated track for math that you could do. So it looked really bad to top colleges if you chose that...from what I've heard from college admissions people, a lot of it is also dependent on what is available at your school. If there were more advanced options available and you didn't take them, then for a top tier college that sets you below the competition. Whereas if your school didn't even offer calculus, they wouldn't hold that against you. I think there are two separate issues here - the issue of college admissions to a top tier college nowadays without calculus in high school, which in my personal experience is really unheard of, and the issue of whether to retake calculus in college which plenty of people do. This is just from my experience though - I graduated from college within the past year.

I love my PC :D And my entire computer geek family is a PC family (esp. my little brother since he is a major gamer!) :D

Speaking as someone who majored in math, I think it depends a lot on how competitive a college you are looking at. A lot of the top colleges, in my experience, expect calculus to be taken in high school, so the chances of getting in without having taken calculus are a lot slimmer (I'm talking about top 25 to top 50 schools, that's all I know about). And then if you did get in, then you would be competing against kids who had almost all taken up to BC Calc in high school (if you were doing a STEM major) so if you did start with Calc 1, most of the other kids would be retaking calculus, not doing it for the first time. It was pretty much completely unheard of at my university for a STEM major not to have taken calculus in high school. This is based only based on my experience though; YMMV.

Single.

If you haven't bought Office yet, you can use OpenOffice if you want to save money. It's what I use and I've found it to be really good and it's totally free. Just make sure you set your computer to do the updates when they're available. A lot of the virus prevention is just not downloading stuff if you don't know/trust the source. And I like using firefox because it is good about telling me about whether a site might harm my computer and it stops you before going to a site that is potentially harmful. Plus, if I do get a virus, I have my own personal geek squad in my family to fix it :lol:

I must admit I love my PCs...welcome back to the other side;) It won't be so bad though and then soon enough you will be back to using your Mac!

I'm getting so nostalgic... Molly was the first doll I ever got! I loved reading all those American Girl doll stories. And then I also had those books that described life back in each particular time period (like what life was like in the 1940s). This thread is such a trip down memory lane. :)

That reminds me of the year my little brother coming back from family vacation decided to stick some sort of toy car contraption in his backpack. He set off the metal detector and the poor TSA person had to go rifling through his backpack (through all sorts of dirty tissues and candy wrappers my little brother apparently couldn't be bothered to throw away :confused:) to look for any dangerous materials. I still feel bad for the TSA officer - ugh, having to look through all that stuff.

I've never flown before with kids, but I have flown out of Reagan several times and in my opinion, it's easier to navigate than Dulles since it is smaller (or at least seems smaller, I'm not sure how they actually compare in terms of size). Again not speaking from the experience of flying with kids, but having flown a lot recently, I've found it to be not much different than previous years. Easy shoes to take off and put on would obviously be good. But overall Reagan is a pretty pleasant airport - not too much ground to cover between security and the gates if I'm remembering correctly.

:iagree: I'll top that - I was only briefly alive in the 80's :auto: And Jean in Newcastle: At least you don't call people in their 40's the young people. My grandfather does that now. He was talking about someone and referred to her as a young woman and I said wait a minute, how old is she and he said I don't know in her early 40's? :lol: Btw, I love the show Murder, She Wrote. :)